


light a candle, curse the night

by freudiancascade



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, I will fight and die for my girl and this is not up for debate, The Buried - Freeform, The Hunt, grotesque heart imagery, julia montauk defense squad 2k19, spoilers up through the end of s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 21:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18764524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudiancascade/pseuds/freudiancascade
Summary: The first thing Julia Montauk does when she turns eighteen is move out on her own. It’s the best sleep she’s had since childhood, flat on her back on a mattress directly on the concrete of her new basement flat, staring at the cobwebbed stucco ceiling above until her eyes close of their own accord.The second thing Julia Montauk does when she turns eighteen is file the paperwork to legally begin the process of changing her name.The third thing she does, two days later, is frantically claw it back and submit an application for a visitors pass to HMP Wakefield instead.





	light a candle, curse the night

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece, of sorts, to “ _make little piles of all the things you don’t understand_.” 
> 
> Consider me a fan of the “my parents signed me up for a lifetime of Eldritch nonsense and all I got was this cool coat, shit taste in music, and small mountain of unresolved trauma” club.

* * *

Julia Montauk is twelve years old, and she hates that the press has taken to calling it the “murder trial of the century.”

She is allowed inside the courtroom for some of the testimony, but the judge has her escorted out when the evidence seems prone to taking an especially grisly turn. This is often, considering the nature of Robert Montauk’s crimes, and Julia spends more time staring at the closed door than she does at the back of her father’s impassive head. She hates this, too, but nobody ever asked her opinion about any of it.

The building itself is all white brick, a complex arrayed around a central atrium. There is an indoor tropical garden planted in containers beneath the glass roof, the thick glossy leaves spreading in dark green and red like waxy stains against the peat moss. Julia hops the railing when her minders aren’t paying attention and lays down flat on her back in the dirt, ignoring both their dismay over the breach of decorum and the possibility of soiling her starched Sunday best.

Clouds drift slowly by. Julia stares up unblinking at them until their outlines shine with colors stolen from the sun behind them instead of the flat white she knows them to be. She feels her breath move slowly through her body as though it is happening to somebody else, and her heart thud steadily inside her chest. It occurs to her, then, how dark it must be inside her own ribcage. Julia pictures cracking past those circled bones and wrenching out her own heart, holding it up to the glass dome and allowing the sunlight to stream through the veins and ventricles. She imagines it filling up the chambers slowly, like a diagram she’d seen recently of how blood is supposed to move through the tissue and muscle, until the whole thing glistens and glows. For a moment she can almost see it, shining and beating happily in her hands, nourished by the warmth and brightness of the sun. It is magical, and she hums happily to herself at the thought.

In the next moment, reality hits her again and the thought is decidedly _not_ magical anymore.

Julia wakes up screaming every single night that week. The judge somehow hears of it, and decides she is not allowed in the building at all anymore. The trial drags on into the mire without her.

* * *

The first thing Julia does when she turns eighteen is move out on her own.

She doesn’t have much, just the detritus that survived getting bounced through the foster system. The bulk of it fits in a knapsack proper; she carries the rest in a box in her arms. There’s some paperback novels and therapy workbooks, her clothes, a small CD collection. A tattered wallet. A once beautiful silver pendant, now tarnished from neglect. A jacket that she has only recently grown into, though it still sits too broadly over her shoulders. Nobody needs to tell her who she looks like when she wears it--she’ll hold anybody’s gaze steady and dare them to guess. She’s been working two jobs since graduation, in a cafe slinging coffee in the mornings and in the security booth of the local mall in the afternoons, and so she can (barely) afford the rent on her own place. It’s a dingy basement suite she finds through a paper flyer plastered to the cafe bulletin board and agrees to lease unseen--possibly a mistake, but she’s too giddy with her newfound freedom to care. Her upstairs neighbors are most certainly selling drugs, she has to lay sticky tape down at the threshold to the door to stop the ants from getting in, and there are cracks in the walls. She can never get the place quite bright enough for her tastes, and the nightlights she stole from the group home don’t even begin to properly penetrate the gloom that settles in after sundown. It’s still the best sleep she’s had since childhood, flat on her back on a mattress directly on the concrete, staring at the cobwebbed stucco ceiling above until her eyes close of their own accord.

The second thing Julia Montauk does when she turns eighteen is file the paperwork to legally begin the process of changing her name.

The third thing she does, two days later, is frantically claw it back and submit an application for a visitors pass to HMP Wakefield instead.

* * *

Her father dies when she is nineteen, and she still does not have answers.

The prison official who calls to give her the news is curt over the line, and details are scant. She later learns that it was chalked up to “gross incompetence” on the part of a guard, and it makes her blood boil.

Even then, something deep inside her knows that can’t _possibly_ be the truth.

A day later, a second phone call comes. Julia’s heart soars at the number, but then sinks as she realizes it is only another prison representative interested in how she intends to handle the logistics. If she plans to collect the body, after the autopsy. He gives her a calculated, tactful moment to contemplate this, and then gently--but firmly--advises a cremation and an unmarked grave.

“For the public’s best interest,” the man says, and Julia nearly screams that he was _her_ father, none of the bloody _public’s_ business, and how dare he--

\--but no. She knows already that he is right. He faxes her the forms and she signs them off with a shaky hand, the sharp edges of her last name pressed hard enough to the paper that it almost tears right through. Later she will hate herself for not asking any further questions; in the moment she is young and orphaned, and too overwhelmed to do anything more than send them off and collapse crying on the print shop counter. The woman who owns the place will stroke her hair gently and whisper dimly reassuring things; she will not register them.

Two weeks later, photographs of Robert Montauk’s mutilated corpse and bloodstained cell will be leaked to the press. Nobody will warn her; she will see them printed in a local circular in black and white while drinking a stale mug of coffee in a shabby diner and trying to ignore her grief.

Two weeks after that, she will give a statement. Walking out into the sunlight, her sneakers moving on autopilot down the stone steps of the Magnus Institute’s front door, she will pretend that she has left her story behind her and that is the end of the matter.

Now, Julia Montauk is truly alone in the world.

* * *

At twenty-three, she briefly takes up spoken word poetry.

Julia has finally abandoned her dream of becoming a cop, after yet another academy admissions advisor gently-but-firmly recommended changing her name before even attempting to apply to the program. She’s angry and she’s tired and she needs a hobby, so perhaps that’s why it happens. The pub down the road from her flat has a night devoted to slam poetry and performance every other week, and offers free drinks to anybody brave (or stupid) enough to take the plunge. She tells herself she’s in it only for the booze, and even believes it until she steps on stage and finds out that she _likes_ this.

The words feel like fire, biting sharp and quick from her tongue, conveying themselves into an order that runs on a rhythm all its own. She can be _angry_ in this place, properly livid, and it courses through her like a cadence as it captivates onlookers like a song. Her earrings shine in the spotlight as she tosses her head, bright like stars against the dark gleam of her long hair, and Julia feels powerful.

She even feels like she might possibly be good at this, which she knows means that she is mediocre at best. It doesn’t seem to matter much. She sips her drink and basks in the compliments. A boy down the bar buys her another round when the first one is gone, and she briefly considers going home with him before deciding against it.

She goes back to the next event, though, and the one after that. The seasons drift onwards, leaves falling from trees, and Julia’s knuckles are blotted frequently with ink. She writes in red because she likes the way it looks as it stains her hands, like a private joke between her and the rest of the universe. She gets to know the rest of the regulars at slam poetry night as she slips into chasing that glow, finding creation to be a bulwark against the lengthening nights.

She even does end up sleeping with that boy, three or maybe four times, when she fancies him more than she fancies walking home alone in the dark. It’s almost nice, and she almost feels settled. Even dares to tell him where she came from, earnest whispers in the glow of the bedside lamp, her hands clenching and unclenching as he listens to this most hellish of pillow talk. She knows enough to be certain he is trying very hard to keep his face a mask, and it is almost absolutely not his fault when he fails at it.

Still, she grits her teeth and hangs on.

It all goes to hell the next week, when he writes a poem about it. There's nothing else to do, stranded as she is, but to watch him deliver it to the crowded room with his eyes as wide and earnest as the autumn moon outside. Even the free drink can’t sooth the horrified flush to her cheeks or rising panic in her stomach, and she does not even attempt to let him down gently. Makes something of a scene, even, and leaves the other patrons to sit in stunned silence after the door crashes shut behind her.

Julia breaks her lease and moves out that evening, the first snowflakes falling gently from the sky. It doesn’t bother her much--at least the drifting snow catches the streetlamps and brings the glow of them down close. She closes her eyes and breathes in that crisp smell after stowing the last of the moving boxes in the back of her car, trying to trace her own heartbeat.

And then she slams the trunk down hard, ignores the empty ache inside her chest, and does not look back. Chalks it up to a lesson learned, and keeps moving.

* * *

Her twenty-fifth birthday is marked by a power outage.

It is not the candles one would hope for on that occasion, pulling out the emergency supply and arranging them on the coffee table until her studio flat is aglow in a way that almost feels bright enough to chase back the shadows at the edges of it. Julia falls asleep on the sofa, dreams fitfully of darkness, and awakens to the blue hum of the telly flicking itself back on when power returns at three in the morning.

She clicks through the channels, watching through bleary eyes, and settles on a late night news show. There is a bulletin about the price of feed for cattle, a weather segment, and then shaky footage of familiar courtroom steps. A heavily-tattooed man with poorly-dyed dark hair ascends the steps with his inked hands cuffed in front of him and handlers waving off shouting reporters; the door closes once he is inside. A polite voiceover provides context,

“The courtroom this morning was full as the murder trial of Gerard Keay drags on into its third week. Some are even drawing comparisons to the trial of serial killer Robert Montauk, who’s forty-one murders were a media sensation both due to the scale of his crimes and the occult elements of his--”

Julia flicks the television off, and sets the remote deliberately down on the coffee table. Her hand is shaking so hard anyways, she knocks over a candle. The next several minutes are a mess of burning her fingers against hot wax and cursing the stain on the carpet, she _really_ can’t afford to lose another damage deposit, and she’s not certain why she even bloody bothered to--  
  
\--no. None of this is okay. _She_ is not okay. The room is darker without that glow, and she can feel her heart rising in the base of her throat.

The next morning, Julia makes a few phone calls and sees about getting herself a new therapist. This one is more helpful than most, and suggests she starts working nights.

Julia finds that it suits her just fine.

* * *

She nearly dies three months after partnering with Trevor.

Something inside her has changed, since the night she made her first kills, and she is both delighted and distantly concerned by what it means. Perhaps that is why she hesitates a moment longer than she should when the creature made of earth and clay moves towards her in a darkened graveyard.

It is almost the last mistake she ever makes.

The thing grabs her faster than she thought it could and drags her by the hair, and her cry is equal parts fury and pain. She did not expect something like this abomination to be so _sharp_ , and the fact that there are claws wrestling her to the ground--tearing, grasping, carving, _it has her by the bloody hair--_ isn’t something she’s prepared for. Julia yells, struggling. Her foot connects with a tombstone and only manages to send a shock of pain up her leg; her hands tear uselessly at chunks of grass. There is dirt in her mouth, and it tastes too much like copper. She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can’t--

Trevor’s shovel comes down hard on the monster’s head. The claws slacken. Julia scrambles up with the moment of reprieve, panting and spitting out rust-colored mud, and reaches for a shovel of her own. She can feel her hair sticking up wildly on the side of her head, matted and thick with gore, but the pain and blood only narrows her focus down.

The hunters set to work with a vengeance.

They disassemble the creature piece by piece, seal each heavy portion in a separate plastic container, and throw them into the Thames. Watch them sink down into the water, and then trudge silently to the car.

At a gas station, Julia pops into the restroom for a moment, ostensibly to clean herself up. Her wrists tremble hard when she rests them against the porcelain sink, and the red stains on her knuckles look briefly--vividly--like ink. Julia almost laughs at this, but finds the sound dead in the base of her throat.

It is a logical decision to cut her hair off as soon as her fingers are steady enough to do it, working methodically and coarsely with the scissors in her bag. It is a heavy inelegant tool, designed for trimming twine and fishing wire, but she makes do. Beneath her hands, her scalp is raw and bloody; she trims that side shorter to more easily tend to the injury, a grim approximation of an undercut, and then studies her reflection impassively in the mirror for a long time.

Her cheekbones are high and bruised. She is not pretty, but that isn’t a surprise. She figures she hasn’t been, not for a long time, and it’s just more apparent now without anything soft to hide her harshness behind. She looks powerful, though, and she thinks she likes that. Julia turns her head from one side to the other, considering.

She really does look like her father.

Trevor casts her a concerned look when she emerges; Julia just shakes her head with a scowl and stalks to the car without comment. The only concession she’ll make to the head injury is to allow him to drive, just until she’s certain her vision is entirely unaffected. They don’t talk about what happened and she likes that, too.

It is another lesson learned. Next time she’s faced with a monster, Julia Montauk doesn’t hesitate to kill it.

* * *

She has always been a jogger, but once she begins hunting Julia takes up running in earnest.

It doesn’t feel like a hobby as much as it feels like a call in her blood, some part of her deep inside her chest and her feet that only sits right--only settles still--when she’s making it move. There is acid buildup in her legs and her lungs ache for air and it’s _wonderful_ , chasing her own breath out past the skyline of every new city or town they visit.

She gets good at taking the lay of the land with her feet, learning the ways that the streets or wilderness twist and turn. Sometimes Julia pretends she is chasing something down--a monster or a glowing light, something fleeing or fantastic that always lurks just ahead, just around the next bend, just barely past the edge of the horizon.

It makes her push a little bit harder when her body demands she stop. It makes that bright hot anger in her chest flare, and fades out everything else into soft-focus blurs. It is pure and it is right and it is natural and it is good. It is her heart pounding furiously inside the darkness of her ribcage, a strong thing working exactly like it is meant to, and it is a light that glows steady beneath the curved edges of her bones. A compass point, a true north, always fixed and always in flux. Something to keep chasing. The universe is always in motion--a body should always be in motion--and as long as she stays that way, she does not have to stop.

It is not especially profound, but it feels that way. She loves it more than she has ever loved anything before, she’s pretty sure.

“It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness,” a counselor had told her once. The man had been one of her worse therapists, too preoccupied with being glib and clever to offer anything of actual value. Julia had spent most of those sessions watching the fish swim in slow circles around the tank in the corner of his office, marveling at how--for all they were moving--they never actually made it anywhere of value. This, too, feels profound.

He was wrong, anyways, about the candles. Julia knows that now.

Get angry and motivated enough, and it's entirely possible to do both.

* * *

Trevor has an awful habit of trying to explain, to anybody who will listen, how the world actually works. He was always like that, Julia knows. Part of him never stopped aching to be _believed_ by people, to be seen, to be trusted. He wears his long-ago pain on his sleeve in that way, and she knows he never had an endless succession of earnest counsellors trying frantically to convince him that any of it was a trauma-based hallucination.

Lucky bastard.

Knowing more won’t save anybody, though. She generally prefers civilians stay as far away from the darkness as possible. Hard as hell to fish them back out once they stumble in. Futile, too, to boot. Half the time when they save people she walks away knowing, somehow, that they’re still doomed anyways.

It all only gets worse after they steal the book of souls and the dead man with sad eyes--too many eyes, drawn all over the memory of his skin, and all of them strangely achingly _sad_ \--teaches them the proper vocabulary for the Horrors they both already know how to fight. Some days Julia genuinely regrets recognizing the name on the very last page and reading the words aloud, but now they’re stuck with the echoes of Gerard Keay and his arcane academia.

 _Most_ days she regrets it, honestly. Only comfort is that he’s also stuck here with them, and so it doesn’t have to be pleasant for anybody. He does generally know what the hell he’s talking about, too, which helps. Killing awful things faster and with less collateral damage-- _that’s_ something Julia can really get behind.

“You know,” Gerard tells her one night when Trevor is out of earshot, “you may want to keep a closer eye on yourself. And him.”

She snarls involuntarily, waving her hand to point at her own knuckles. “Eyes, yeah. Worked out great for you, is that it?”

“Not what I meant,” the ghost responds, clenching a tattooed hand. He sounds tired, and the hair that floats freely around his face has gone fuzzy and indistinct at the edges. “When people move closer to their Entities of choice, they become less... _themselves_.”

Julia rolls her eyes now, tipping her head back against the wall. “Worried about my career having a negative impact on my sparkling personality? Cute.”

“Also not what I meant. Gods know why, but I felt you deserve a fair warning. Most of the monsters that you and Helsing Sr spend your days hunting down….they started out human, you know. Course you know. It’s a quick and slippery path away from that, once you start moving closer to a Power.”

“So what?” Julia challenges. “Hasn't exactly done much for me lately, has it? Being human. I’m better off without it, even.”

The ghost shrugs, and turns away from her. “Right. Yeah. None of my bloody business.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.”

She dismisses him--he goes--and she tries to not think about that conversation again.

In her dreams now, Julia can run further and further. Sometimes she goes so fast, her body leans forward and her hands press off against the ground, claws digging for stability in the earth. Sometimes she wakes up dizzy from the thrill of it, and expects to find her mouth full of fangs when she runs her tongue across her teeth. She thinks her sense of smell is keener, now. The scent of blood no longer bothers her.

She isn’t the one running, now--she is the one chasing. The one hunting.

Finally, Julia Montauk does not want to look back.

* * *

_When Julia is six, and nothing bad has happened to her yet, there is a garden in the backyard. Her mum tends it proudly, guiding Julia's curious fingers through the soil and announcing the names of each plant. There is tuberose and jasmine, pinkladies and evening trumpet, and a whole array of other plants with fancy names that her small mouth can not properly pronounce yet. The shed is full of gardening tools, and it smells nice. Julia likes it all, even if she doesn't understand why anybody would tend so carefully to plants that keep their colors hidden from the sun._

_On an evening when the moon is bright, her mum rouses her from bed and takes her out into the backyard. It feels illicit and exciting, her bare feet jammed into slippers several sizes too big and her pyjamas dragging in the earth as she follows her down the cobblestone path. Even now, in the middle of the night, the beautiful silver closed eye and open palm pendant shines at the base of her mum’s throat._

_The garden is in bloom now, the colors made silver beneath the glow of the moon and the stars, the leaves and petals fragrant and bright. It is beautiful in a way she doesn't have words for yet, and her heart feels like it's going to come flying apart inside her chest._

_She understands, then._

_She looks out over the moonlit flowers, her mum solid at her back and the night stretching endlessly in front of her, and she thinks she understands._

_In the years to come, tragedy and horror will leave their marks. The shed will find new awful uses. Neglect and grief will send the garden into disrepair. When a twelve year-old Julia runs frantically from her home in the middle of the night, she will not notice the straggling blooms she tramples._

_But when a family, years later, tears down the shed and builds a gazebo where it stood, the night-blooming jasmine will twine around the foundations of it all the same. It is not pretty, but it is strong. It persists despite the lack of attention--or, arguably, because of it. Not because it has any reason to, but because nobody’s ever given it a good enough reason to stop._

_And when the full moon hits it just right, it is stunning all the same._


End file.
